Monday, 16 April 2012

Brenda's a fantastic photographer and she's making the trip from bustling Brooklyn, NYC to bumbling Blackborough in the beautiful Devon hills to mentor 10 participants in this close and intimate residential workshop. There is loads more information about the workshop at www.thehinterlands.co.uk or feel free to email me with any questions at mike[at]thehinterlands[dot]co[dot]uk.

The lovely Gill Chattey designed this flyer for us and we hope you can find a place to make it shine. Maybe print it out and stick it on your fridge, your window or at your place of work or you could email it facebook it post it on twitter - or just generally "social media it".

Tuesday, 3 April 2012

I've spent the morning outside of my flat, outside of the office and outside of the screen on my computer. With the beautiful spring weather we've been having it's been really hard to have been sat inside tapping away working on the new Hinterlands website although now it's done I think it was well worth the effort.

Last years Hinterlands workshop celebrated the great outdoors, photography, photofilms, tasty food, a sense of community, yurts, having a drink around the fire and storytelling in equal measures and was a big success. Fifteen happy people walked away from their time in Devon with the skills to make a photofilm after a week of learning in the big barn with duckrabbit.

This year we are adding another workshop to the roster so we thought it was time for an upgrade to our presence on the web. duckrabbit are back for 2012 and will be playing host to 15 trainees at The Hinterlands. Be prepared to be immersed in a world of photofilms and storytelling and ready to increase your potential to use multimedia as part of your work.

On top of this we have, all the way from New York city the wonderful Brenda Ann Kenneally. Brenda is a skilled storyteller and has many comprehensive bodies of work under her belt. Ten lucky participants will be taken under her wing for a week to thoroughly look at their working practice and to build upon their skills using a multi-layered approach to documentary storytelling. Brenda also

We are so pleased to be working with such talented people like Brenda and duckrabbit and will also be getting in some great speakers to keep the trainees evenings jam packed with interesting talks and screenings. On top of all of that we are chuffed to be welcoming back the wonderful Olivia in the kitchen who will again be cooking up a storm of wonderful food to feed those creative appetites.

The best thing about The Hinterlands this year is the fact that it is still a small workshop that holds true to it's values. We source local food and drink and all of the trainees will work on stories in the local environment, stories that we hope the subjects will come and view later for themselves over a beer. The participants share yurts with solar lights, compost loos and warming wood burning stoves and get to know each other enhancing their learning experience. Our workshops aren't up on a pedestal and all of the people involved are normal people who enjoy sharing their knowledge and skills. If you come down to The Hinterlands this year you will eat, drink and relax with the trainers, our cook, Rebecca and myself (that would be us the organisers..) and generally be part of the whole experience. This is really important to us, it's how a workshop should be and it's how The Hinterlands is and we are so happy to be running it.

Jonathan Worth from the online photography class #phonar, a speaker at the 2011 Hinterlands workshop.

Obviously I am slightly biased as I am part of the workshop but I really do believe it's a great experience and that we offer something truly individual. So biased or not - get on the website and have a read about what we do, look at some of the testimonials or watch our photofilm featuring last years trainees. I think you'll like it and I hope you will want to come down and become part of it this summer.

Oh and I had an idea. I need to clear it with Olivia but I was thinking of making fresh sourdough loaves every morning. There really is nothing better than a hunk of fresh sourdough, a bit of butter and a spoon of marmalade coupled with a fresh cup of coffee to start a creative day in the countryside....sounds good to me!

Right well I think I'm going to have another cup of tea and then wonder what to do with all of the veg that I foraged this morning. I have wild garlic which will definetly end up as a wild garlic pesto, nettles which I am slightly less well versed in and primroses which are great in salads all to look forward to....yum!

Monday, 2 April 2012

A good friend and follower of the westcountrysnapper just informed me that flickr is rubbish and has been hiding Thomas Denny and Heather Fell's portraits from my site. I was never a massive fan of flick and I don't really know why thos portraits ended up there but they are back up on the site.

So there uyou have it flickr is rubbish and these are not.. aurora borealis in Norway by my good friend and helicopter aficionado Jonno. He's been hassling me about getting a zoom lens as these all on wide primes so maybe next year we will see a bit more aurora and a little less of everything else.